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Are Japanese hotels earthquake proof?
Should be we looking to stay at more traditional places or modern buildings?
Tags: japan hotel
Edited 2/15/2018 8:14:05 AM by Shimizu77 ...View History
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Answer @ 3/16/2017 3:08:33 AM by lightcapital

Today, office blocks, hotels and apartment buildings are of course constructed with modern materials. However, the failure of many to withstand the powerful 1995 Hanshin earthquake that struck the Kobe area exposed the inadequacy of many construction methods and standards. This was because of the post war obsession with comfort, convenience and the latest electronic gadgetry has led most Japanese to forsake the traditional, simple, and elegant house of wooden walls, heavy tiled roofs tatami-mat fours and sliding panels for a modern "Western-style" house designed to exchange the austerity of the past for the prosperity of the future.

You will most likely feel regular tiny movements in your hotel that is simply absorbed by the structure.

You might be interested to know that not until a 20th-century Western architect. Frank Lloyd Wright, arrived in Tokyo to build the earthquake-resistant Imperial Hotel was it considered possible – let alone desirable—to attempt to defy the ravages of nature.

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